How it Was
by MsCNO
Summary: An examination of the relationship between Mary and John Winchester, set after "And the Song Remains the Same", with references to "In the Beginning" and "Dark Side of the Moon". What caused them to fight so much that John left, and how did we get to the happy appearing family in the first few minutes of the pilot.


Spoilers: This story references Season 4, episode 3 "In the Beginning", Season 5, episode 3 "And the Song Remains the Same" with some quotes from Season 5, episode 16 "Dark Side of the Moon".

Author's Note: I always wondered what led to John and Mary Winchester having marital problems. Young John Winchester seemed like a good guy, deeply in love with his wife. I recently watched 'In the Beginning', 'And the Song Remains the Same' and remembered Dean's version of Heaven in "Dark Side of the Moon" and wondered, even though Michael erased John and Mary's memories of Dean, Sam and the angels visiting, what if they could never shake the feelings that came from that night? How would Mary's knowledge of her deal with old Yellow Eye's affect their relationship, and how did they end up looking so happy in the opening scene of the 'Pilot' episode. I appreciate any reviews and critique's.

How it Was by MsCNO

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At times there was nothing but laughter. Mary had always loved the sound of John's laugh, so deep and carefree. She could lose herself in it. He would sit on one end of the couch and she would stretch out across it, her swollen feet in his lap, her pregnant belly, carrying their soon-to-be first born, nearly obscuring the view of his face and watch 'Taxi'.

"That Andy Kauffman," John would say after laughing so hard his eyes would water. It was bliss.

Mary loved the normalcy, craved the mundane events each day would bring. Trips to the hardware store were exciting, cooking pancakes on Sunday's better than she imagined a trip to Paris could be. It was them, the baby growing inside her (a son, she was convinced), and it was everything she imagined a life without ghosts and monsters was supposed to be.

But sometimes…

There was tension. It would be in the air when she would wake up, John still in bed, his body tense beside her. She would pretend to still be sleeping and wait for John to begin to get ready for work before emerging from the bedroom. Sometimes they would exchange simple goodbyes before he left for the shop, and others they wouldn't say a word to each other. Mary would sit at the kitchen table, hands grasped tightly around her coffee, mind racing trying to figure out exactly what events would lead to these days, and it would always come back to one thing: that John had discovered her deep dark secret, and was disgusted. She would catch him staring at her, his brow wrinkled as if deep in thought. Her pulse would quicken, a blush coming to her cheeks.

On some occasions she would ask if he were okay.

"This sounds crazy," he would say in a faraway voice, "but I feel like there is something you're keeping from me."

"Yes, it sounds crazy," she would say and rub her belly and life would continue on. She tried not to think about John's lifeless body lying on the ground, the yellow gleam in her possessed father's eyes, or the way her mother's head lay crooked on her shoulders and her eyes glossy, her face frozen in terror.

How could Mary explain that at night she would dream of monsters and ghosts, images from her life before him that she tried all too hard to push away? She couldn't, not without John institutionalizing her. Still, she would rather explain those dreams than the ones she'd have of events that never were. Of John's being tossed through the window of their family safe house, of a man bleeding to death on the floor before her eyes, and a deep male voice saying _"John became a hunter"._ She would awake in a panic and stare at her husband, more disgusted by the thought of John living the lifestyle of something she abhorred more than any real monster she had ever faced. She knew it was just a nightmare, that John didn't even know that things like that even existed, but the dream always seemed so real, so familiar.

Mary continued on with life as though everything were normal, and for every tense moment there were a thousand good. They decorated the nursery in neutral colors, and on impulse she bought a small ceramic angel to rest on the shelf.

"You really don't think it's just a little cheesy," John had asked as they hovered nearby the newly assembled crib.

"I think it's sweet," she replied, and John had draped his arm around her shoulder, fingers delicate brushing her stomach. And after he left, the baby (her son, she'd think) had kicked her hard in the ribs. She playfully called it (him) a trouble maker and promised that's it was all okay. "Angels are watching over you."

She was in labor for over thirty hours. The baby was stubborn and difficult, resisting the inevitable expulsion from its only known home and Mary had almost believed that the baby would never emerge when suddenly he was there, in her arm. Her son. Her Dean. She was happy, enamored and in hopeless in love with this perfect being she and John had created. Mary was certain that this was why she was put on earth. To give birth to such a beautiful little boy.

It was January 24, 1979, a Wednesday.

All she could think of was that nursery rhyme her mother would tell her, a fortune-telling rhyme that was all positivity and sunshine except for those born on Wednesday. She lay exhausted in the early morning hours, unable to keep her eyes off John as he held their swaddled little boy- their perfect family, and in her mind she kept repeating _Wednesday's child is full of woe._

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John couldn't quite pin where the feelings of uneasiness came from, not really. Sometime after his boss was murdered, and Mary had announced the pregnancy, he started getting this pit in the bottom of his stomach. It reminded him of his time in Vietnam, during patrol when he would just know that someone, somewhere, was watching from the fields. He tried attributing it the stress of finding and learning the ropes at a new job while waiting on the arrival of the baby. That's a lot of change, and he was a man who liked order.

Some nights John would dream, and in it would be the sound of glass shattering, the feel of blood on his hands, Mary screaming and bright blinding lights and he would awaken in a cold sweat. It all seemed so real but so jumbled. He would glance down at his pregnant wife, each day growing larger, and her face would be crinkled up as if in worry. Some nights she would moan his name, not the kind filled with pleasure that he enjoyed, but ones much deeper, ones laden with fear and terror.

He would try not to think about the inconsistencies in some of the things Mary had told him over the course of their lives together. He didn't question her, not really, about her father's heart attack coinciding with her mother's unfortunate fall down the stairs. Mary would simply tell him what he needed to know, and the look in her eyes said it all. Still, in the recesses of his mind, he thought he remembered a prone Samuel Campbell laying on the ground with blood on his shirt. John would keep the questions to himself, desperately trying to scratch at the itch in his brain that never quite seemed to go away. He tried not to let it show, but sometimes it would creep into their lives anyway by way of looks and unspoken words.

When Dean was born, everything seemed to change, for a little while anyways. Maybe he was too busy between work, and diapers, and then the baby's nasty bout of colic, but John didn't really have time to pay attention to the feeling in his gut. He would look at his wife, their son, and think of the future and little league teams that he would coach, the fishing trips that loomed on the horizon, and think 'this is what matters'. He was going to give his son the childhood he had longed for after his father left.

It wasn't until October of 1982 that the felling in his stomach started gnawing at him again. Mary discovered she was pregnant. They hadn't planned this one and were a little caught off guard. They had always discussed having a large family, and now they were on their way, Mary seemed so…he wasn't sure what Mary seemed liked because she tried desperately to keep things hidden. So secretive.

"Aren't you excited," he had asked shortly around her fifth month. They were walking down the road, Dean between them and holding tightly to their hands as he knew to do when outside on walks. Mary, whose lips had been pursed tight, seemed to tug up ever so slightly at the corners.

"Of course," she had said, glancing down at Dean who was chattering away about nothing in particular. "It's just, I don't know, I'm worried John."

"Look, a puddle," Dean interjected loudly.

"I see it sweetie," Mary replied before looking back to her husband. "I just feel like something is going to go wrong."

"Wrong with what? The pregnancy? The baby? Mary, that ultrasound thing at the doctors, they said everything looked good. Heck, with them thinking it's another boy think of all the money we'll save on baby clothes." John could still see the worry on his wife's face even as he spoke to her about all the positives.

"Doesn't it all seem too good to be true John?" she had asked. "We have a nice house, you've got a good job. When is the other shoe going to drop?" As usual, Mary turned her attention to Dean, who absolutely radiated love and happiness up at his mother and before John knew it the conversation was dropped.

At night Mary would sometimes cry in her sleep, calling for her parents, a trickle of words escaping her lips and sometimes he wasn't sure if what she spoke were real words or made up ones. He would wake her, she would jolt up, eyes darting around the room but when he tried to talk to her about it, she would just shut down. He wanted to tell her that he was having dreams too, most past the cusp of his memory, and he was getting scared, only he never did because how exactly do you put the unknown into words?

Sometime after midnight on May 2, 1983, days away from her due date, John was awoken to Mary punching and kicking him on the back. She was screaming, something about demons and eyes and it had finally become too much.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" he asked as he shook her awake.

"Nothing," she had said, out of breath, struggling to push herself up in bed, her belly making things difficult.

"No, no I'm not buying that, not for a damn second," he reached over and turned on the bedside table's lamp. He could see the bags under her eyes, the way her lip trembled as she tried to take a sip of water. "I know something is going on, why don't you just tell me?"

"John…"

"No, don't John me and just expect me to roll back over and pretend like something isn't wrong. I'm not a damn fool."

"Maybe if you didn't look at me sometimes like I was some sort of freak," Mary snapped, throwing her legs out of bed.

"What the hell are you talking about?" John followed after her as she left the room and headed down the stairs.

"You think I don't see the way you stare at me, like you are questioning everything. Don't pretend for one second that I'm the only one keeping secrets John Winchester!"

"So you admit there is something," he countered.

Mary had made her way into the kitchen, forcefully opening the fridge and removing a carton of juice as she spoke. "Don't, don't twist my words around on me. Maybe if you wouldn't keep everything locked inside you and try talking to your wife instead of glaring at me from across the room!"

"Maybe I wouldn't glare if you would tell me what the hell has been bothering you!" John was uncomfortable. They had arguments before, what married couple didn't, but never over anything as absurd or indescribable.

"I don't know!" Mary screamed, throwing the carton of juice against the wall of the kitchen, mere feet away from John's head. He reflexively flinched but said nothing, just staring at her, unsure of what should happen next because everything right now was madness. Tears were in her eyes. After what seemed like an eternity she broke the silence. "I'm worried. It was ten years today. My parents died ten years ago today and I feel like time is running out. I worry about you, I worry about the boys. I worry I won't be here for them. What's going to happen to them when I'm gone?"

John cautiously walked over to his wife. "Mary, you're not going anywhere. You're going to be right here, taking care of Dean and taking care of this guy," he put his hand lightly only her stomach.

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Mary was sitting at the kitchen table, watching John clean the last of the orange juice off the kitchen wall, when she felt the all too familiar pains that meant she was going into labor. For a few brief hours the emotions of their early morning fight were forgotten. She forgot that exactly ten years before she promised some yellow-eyed demon something, not her soul, but something. She had expected a long and arduous labor, for surely this one would be just a stubborn as Dean, but Samuel came into the world within four hours of the first contraction.

He was so quiet. He didn't cry, didn't fuss, just lay in her arms and looked at her with such a content demeanor that Mary was sure this child was all John. Her Samuel, so peaceful, so beautiful.

It was Monday, May 2, 1983. "So fair of face," she said to the tightly swaddled baby in her arms. "Not that your brother isn't either." She had worried that she wouldn't have enough love for another child, but Mary couldn't explain how the love just grew the moment he was born. "Sweet Sam, there is nothing I wouldn't do to keep you safe."

She didn't sleep, not that day. Maybe the demon didn't want her soul, but it would want something. It was not until after midnight, and she, John and her children had safely made it through the day, did Mary allow herself to drift into the slightest of slumber.

Their first few days home went smoothly. The constant feedings and diaper changes, along with keeping an enamored Dean from picking the baby up every five minutes, kept both John and Mary going. Sleep deprivation was actually welcomed to Mary, and found it a nice reprieve from the constant barrage of nightmares. For a moment, she again had the normalcy she had craved her entire life. Only eventually the family of four found a routine, and she found herself lacking rational reasons to stay awake while the children slept.

Every day that passed by put her more on edge. It was unlike a demon to just not follow through on a deal. She would wait for it to arrive, eye the mail man suspiciously if he lingered too long at the mailbox, and went as far as to paint a very faint devil's trap under the welcome mat to the front door.

The summer sped thru to the fall, and for every happy memory of the four of them on a family excursion to a park or swimming at the lake, there were four or five that consisted solely of their arguments. At night she would dream that she was standing in a barren room, screaming for her husband and sons, knowing that they were gone, and he had taken them off to fight some unforeseen evil. When she would awake, her anger at John would linger and she would nitpick everything to death until the inevitable blowup. She wanted to stop, she truly did, but the feeling that she was careening toward something big, something ten years in the making, brought forth a terror she could not verbalize. Every day that the yellow-eyed demon didn't make his entrance only intensified the terror. Mary didn't do terror, but she could get angry, and she could fight, and so that's what she did.

John began to grow distant, and more nights than not she would find him passed out in front of the television instead of coming back to their room. One afternoon in mid-October, as John sat in his recliner, slightly inebriated while watching the Orioles take game two of the World Series, and Mary tried to calm a fussy Sam and entertain and endlessly energetic Dean, she finally snapped.

"Do you know what I sacrificed for you?" The sound of her voice, loud and unexpected, caused Dean, who had been playing with his race car track and making lots of vrooming noises, to become suddenly still. Even Sam, who had been wiggling in her arms just a moment before, became eerily still.

At first John said nothing, letting the weight of Mary's words hang in the air. Then, with an exasperated sigh, asked "What does that even mean?"

Her heart was pounding out of her chest, and in that moment she almost told him. Told him about the demons, and the deal, about the horrible nightmares she would have a night and the fear of him taking the boys and raising them the way her parents raised her. It was all there on the tip of her tongue, and if she could just get the words out then maybe she and John wouldn't be on the verge of hating each other.

Only she said nothing, and instead just stood firmly in place, eyes locked on her husband. He looked at her, and for the first time in the marriage she saw John looked defeated. He looked over to Dean and gave him a slight smile, then stood up, grabbed the Impala's keys from the kitchen table, and left without saying another word.

He was gone for almost a week. Part of Mary hated him, hated that he left her alone with two small children and no car. It was humbling to have the neighbor drive her to the market to pick up groceries, and having to make up some excuse that John was visiting sick relatives to keep up the charade of the All-American Family that had become so vital to her. Mary hated her vulnerability.

Despite all the anger, which most of it she knew was displaced, a larger part of her worried about John, sleeping in his beloved Impala behind some store, where he could fall prey to werewolves, vampires or random vagrants looking for money. It was cold out and she wondered if he had enough blankets to keep from freezing to death.

"Dad still loves you. I love you, too. I'll never leave you."

It was Dean, her loving sweet Dean, saying those words, hugging her after another phone call that ended all to abruptly with John. She hated that her nearly five-year old son had to say them at all, and that her fear had driven her family to the brink of destruction. She knew what she would have to do.

As Dean went back to eating his sandwich, and she began to make him a pie, Mary formulated exactly what she would say to John when she called him back at the shop. How she would acknowledge that they were having problems, but that they should work on them together. At some point, she thought as she rolled out the pie crust, she would tell John the truth about her past. Bring him up to the Campbell family hideout and teach him about devil traps and exorcisms- given him a chance to understand where her fears were coming from. She would never allow her boys to be raised in the hunter lifestyle, but it might not hurt to have a husband savvy enough to be of use just in case.

Mary didn't know what the future was going to bring, had no idea what the 'something' was that the demon would come for, but she knew that she wouldn't let it destroy her family anymore.


End file.
